A friend once said to me “touch paper once and deal with it.” If you go to the effort of picking it up, do something with it so you don’t have to pick it up again. Along with this same premise is the concept “complete a task right away if it will take you less than 5 minutes to do so” – everyone has 5 minutes in a day to complete the job. Putting it away or avoiding it till later only keeps it in your head and on your list sometimes, indefinitely.
So being and staying organized is a mixture of action, intention and follow-through. Things become unorganized when we say to ourselves “I will get to that later.” Just deal with it now and get it done – later often never comes.
Part of creating an organized lifestyle is knowing, what system works for you. In our office, many of us keep information and to do lists in notebooks. When I flip through the pages of my notebook, all my meeting pages have dates so I can look back to discussions and ideas as events develop. I can keep to do lists alongside meeting notes and use a system of an * highlighting my action items after every meeting. When jobs are done and pages in my notebooks are complete, and events are complete I use a diagonal line across the page to visually inform myself there is nothing else to see or do here. My job is complete which also provides a sense of accomplishment.
Finally the act of writing and re-writing to do lists keeps projects fresh and up to date while not losing key follow-through items along the way. Although it sounds tedious, the act of re-writing your action items gets the details out of your head, onto paper and ready for completion.
In summary remember four points of action when starting to get organized and creating your own organizing strategies:
1. Touch paper once – deal with it!
2. If it takes less than 5 minutes to do it…then just do it!
3. Put things back where they belong the very first time
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